Copper Casting In Ancient America

On Thu, 27 May 2004 13:28:14 +1200, Eric Stevens wrote: [SNIP]

I originally wrote: "The article here:

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is written by the person who is probably the leading authority on the subject. She looks at the questions you raise."

I was citing *here* as the leading authority, not the article, which she agrees is polemical (my word, not hers, I can't remember exactly what she told me)

[SNIP]

Doug

Reply to
Doug Weller
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In New Mexico there is native copper and green mineral versions.

Native (well moved in before us) Indians used the native as pretty shows. The green stuff from what I found out years ago helping a potter - was thought to be pretty and it was ground and put into the 'glass' used on pots. Some of the early pots were just painted almost.

Those fired in pits and covered in leaves to keep in the heat - e.g. blanket - turned from green to native and glinted in the eyes of he beholder.

This is almost like the Raku (sp) developed in Japan at the time or thereafter.

Remember there are large copper open pit mines in the west.

Mart> Ed Huntress wrote:

Reply to
Martin H. Eastburn

Tom, I don't know if you have had or haven't had own experience standing in front of several hundreds to speak and present a study or a research. However 'short' your time up on the podium/speaker's corner is you need to be 100% cristal clear in what you present. There shall be no holes in the acrebi. No lacking of valid argument etc. If you aren't prepared for that speach more than twice as much as you spent your time writing an article you lose in the long run. You needn't present all facts but the facts you chose to present needs to be valid and distinct. And you must be prepared to answer on deep-study follow up questions afterwards.

If a scholar aren't that prepared to speak in front of a scholarly group, it's better not to enter the plattform, not speaking in front of all at all. That's my point. That's why I would have expected more of anyone who claims to be a specialist.

Inger E

Reply to
Inger E Johansson

Eric Stevens says in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

I search for differences but I don't always find significant ones. I look for nodes, nodes don't exist everywhere.

Basically it represents old population centers where ancient peoples settled or were displaced to, and diffusion occurred later.

? Nope, you point was in support of some distinquishing feature of great lake peoples genetically. There is none that I know of. THere may be some long range haplotypes of lower frequency in these native groups, but these can be found every where in every peoples.

For peoples that have alot of literature written about them see:

Parham and Ohta, 1996, Science Watkins et al. 1995, Critical Reviews in Immunology. Two other papers in Tissue antigens, when I find in my huge stack I will append this post.

All four of these papers deal with amazonia and proximal peoples.

Reply to
Philip Deitiker

Oh really - and do you know the meaning of that term, hmmmm..... considering that you are engaged in it at present.

In the event you are dancing to the puppet master's tune and supporting that garbage found at the URL posted by Doug, then you already have the response you now seek. It is BOGUS!!

[snip ad hominim]
Reply to
Seppo Renfors

I've noticed a single website is being used to support the theories which have come up, and it is the same website which inspired the debate in the first place.

I don't think I would categorise Mallery, Conner and Keeler as "authorities", they are amateurs, recognised as such, and Conner (who is the author of the website that contains pretty much all the material being quoted) has been a newspaper journalist all his life.

It's quite well written, as you'd expect from a professional writer, but scientific it is not. For instance, the following paragraph:

"I was now convinced the Ohio pit furnaces were worthy of further investigation. I decided to seek expert advice. I knew American archaeologists weren't world class authorities on pit furnace iron making because all of the known sites were in the Old World. So I wrote to a British historian of metallurgy, Leslie Aitchison, author of A History of Metals. Studying photos and descriptions of the Overly furnace I sent to him, Aitchison identified the remains as "almost certainly" those of a pit iron furnace! I was no longer skeptical about Mallery's iron smelting theory and I have studied the furnaces ever since. "

Now let's consider this in isolation. He is asking a historian, to identify the nature of a structure from:

a) Conner's photographs, b) Conner's descriptions.

He claims to be skeptical at this point - which seems unlikely - but the 'confirmation' he receives persuades him that Mallery was right. Yet he doesn't quote the reply or include a jpg of the letter - he turns the quote into two words "almost certainly".

I think, if I had been Aitchison, my reply might have been fairly similar. I might have said something along the lines of "I can't say with any certainty what you have there, but from your description it is almost certainly an 18th century pit iron furnace."

Good journalist technique, quoting selectively to support the story, in other words. May or may not even know he did this, if he did.

it's all journalism, the "American archaeologists weren't world class authorities on pit furnace iron making because all of the known sites were in the Old World. " is a redundant element to puff up the credibility of the statement, because he doesn't go to an old world archaeologist specialising in them, he goes to an historian instead. And there's no a priori reason to suppose prehistoric Indian furnaces would be identifiable by old world archaeologists, who would never have seen one. It's not even clear that they would be able to identify an 18th century Ohio Settler's one as they won't have seen one of them before either, most likely, although they might know what to expect to find. The rest of the website is essentially similar. I think it's quite good and would be reasonably convincing to some, but rigorous it ain't.

Now I don't have any problem with the site or with Conner, he just comes across as a 1990's Hancock with his 1950's mentor von Daniken, sort of thing.

But I do think it is a bit rich to bring up the website as evidence for Viking sites in Ohio and then refer to the various pages of that one website as support for the positions adopted as a consequence of being taken in by it.

It's a bit like quoting from Hancock, to support Hancockisms. And referring to him as "some authorities" would be inane, he's definitely not asserting conventional history and isn't an authority in the slightest.

Reply to
Martyn Harrison

You see, Inger, this is what is called an "ad hominem" attack because you are ignoring the article entirely and just attacking the credibility of the author.

It more or less means, to anyone who knows these things, that the article is basically correct and you know this and want to rubbish it so that other people won't find out the facts too.

And there you were accusing other people of exactly that activity.

Now then, can anyone tell me what it is called, when someone accuses everyone else of doing what they habitually do themselves?

Reply to
Martyn Harrison

[..]

NO genuine realistic person who can be called "an authority" would stoop to mere mudslinging and demeaning of other people's work. They would uphold their own work and research. This person does NOT do so.

Examples of language:

Other people's work = "Popular literature" which amounts to = "fantasy and mythology"

...and THAT is merely on the very first line of the so called "abstract"!! But there is more UNscientific tactics of a politician:

"mis-statement and myth"; "popular books"; "fallacious";

Oh and if a politician wants some words for a campaign here they are: "Their discovery, description and explanation make an exciting story, one of which the citizens of this region can be rightfully proud and of which they should all be aware."

Oh and this is the signal as to who are the writers of the above, they are the "non-specialist authors", but those who are right are the "Professional archaeologists" and they are the people who tell "facts about Michigan prehistory", or particular revisionism preferred by the author!

All of that mudslinging crud is in the "abstract" - something that is supposed to be a scientific summary or statement of the contents of a book, article, or a formal speech. That alone is sufficient "substance" to judge the remainder as bogus. But if one goes further it will be proven to be true. After all what the abstract does do is openly tell you that they are about to engage in revisionism - not facts! Something she goes on to call "real archaeology".

Why other researchers are not "real" is outlined in 4 "dot points" of mudslinging. Point 1 is an over generalisation or hyperbole. Therefor bogus. Point 2 is a reinforcement of the above, and otherwise hollow words in relation to the subject at hand. However they do paint a picture that SHE is the only one that really knows - the rest are uneducated twits apparently because they need "training" in the very basics of archaeology! Point 3 serious mudslinging - unscientific clap-trap and a waste of space. Point 4 To thing she has the temerity to then claim "These authors overlook the requirements of science" after all the unscientific swill she had come up with - and she refers to everyone who doesn't agree with HER!

Oh and all the "others" resort to "mantra-like repetition" of "myths"

- only what will come from this point on is her reliance on EXACTLY those "myths" for her own revisionism. Therefor she is guilty of exactly that which she accuses others of -and the story HAS to be totally BOGUS, by her own words!

But let us not be side-tracked by trivialities like the material being BOGUS, let us look at what she say's under an emphasised "FACTS" and this is what she points to: "Martians following Dr. Spock and the crew of the starship Enterprise?" - ah yes, and such a person wants to be taken seriously! HAH!

OK so you are a Start Trek fan and consider it valid in an archaeological claim about facts. Then there is this "...none other than the race that discovered the continent, the indigenous American Indians. There are no discontinuities in biological variation" - interesting isn't it! Not only does she do a Weller, and misrepresent what another has said, but she is a racist on top of everything else! She points to "biological variation" to explain "race"!! How unscientific can you get? More importantly the reference to race is unfortunate as "a people" is the intended meaning. Neither has anyone said anything about "biological variation" in the words she quoted. She points to it being "clearly a part of someone's separate reality"

- yes, HERS!

NOTE this: "turned up no evidence, anywhere, of non-native exploitation of prehistoric copper" - first of all, I didn't know copper of any kind being mined was anything BUT "prehistoric" even today! Specifically she now refers to "non-native ... copper" - or ordinary copper ore. For references she points to HERSELF and someone "Clark" who appears to have been a cohort - but listed separately for a greater impact! SO we have an circular claim "because I said it, it must be true" thing again.

Then we come to another so called "fact" again. Where she says: "prehistoric mining is really much longer than this rough estimate" and she suggested it was claimed to be 3000 B.C. to 900 A.D. (Sodders

1990:12). Only she then goes on to say this: "NOT extend as far as Phoenicia or the European Bronze Age, however" - the governing time here is "Europe" any part of it. So now she has painted herself in to a corner. Bronze age in Europe did not exist before 3000 BCE. Immediately after that she claims "sites with dates in the range of 7 thousand years ago" - or to 5000 BCE. But how can thos be, as she later on claims this: "indigenous peoples had been adapting to their home region for 6000 years or more" - or to say they found copper at that place a whole 1000 years before they arrived there.... like WOW!!

So let me state a FACT of my own here - that Susan Martin doesn't know what she is talking about, simple as that!

So is nothing by SUCKER TUCKER! What else do you expect to find on Doug's web pages anyway?

Reply to
Seppo Renfors

Reported elsewhere in addition to the above.

Let me give you a hint, you will NOT find it at Doug Weller's web site!

Reply to
Seppo Renfors

---------

---------

They're born with degrees? Even the self educated researchers who are lock keepers by profession?

Blimey. Mind you, that explains how you came by one. Is anything that is done by a person with a degree automatically research too?

Reply to
Martyn Harrison

[..]

Tom, you are defending the indefensible. In the article she says: "This paper points out....". It includes an "abstract", goes on to an "Introduction" which she doesn't get past and goes directly to and concludes with "references cited" - therefor it is pretending to be a FORMAL paper presented as a speech. You can't get out of that one with rubbery claims of "informal speech"!

Reply to
Seppo Renfors

It's apparent to me that the continuing argument you have going on here, to which we on the metalworking group have only recently been treated, has a breadth and depth that we can hardly fathom.

For the record, though, the "authorities" I was referring to, if I recall correctly -- and I'm not going back to look it up, because the technical facts I was commenting upon obviously are not the issue -- were metallurgists with x-ray inspection backgrounds.

FWIW, bubbles in copper, particularly aggregates of bubbles, are a pretty good indicator that the metal was melted in an air atmosphere, at atmospheric pressure. They're characteristic of crudely made copper castings. I'm no expert on native copper but my understanding it that it's usually homogeneous except for large mineral inclusions. Even if there were bubbles in it for some other reason, they would become severely distorted in a piece of copper that was cold-worked.

Hardly anyone who has some knowledge of the history of metalcasting, of which there are several nomadic examples in rec.crafts.metalworking, would be the least bit surprised that Native Americans were able to melt and to crudely cast copper. Most cultures throughout the world figured out how to melt metal a very long time ago. Central American Indians apparently were quite skilled at casting metals. What's remarkable is what an incredible argument it seems to have spawned.

Oh, before I go, a couple more things: There seems to be an assumption that the copper was melted in crucibles. That would be unusual for early development of castings. Metal was more often allowed to fall into a pool at the bottom of the furnace; open-faced molds were often placed in the bottoms of those furnaces, as a second stage of development. But aggregating small pieces of metal was, in the earliest days, confined to making ingots. In Cyprus, bronze ingots were made in the shape of a stretched animal hide. I have no idea why.

And one last one: Someone commented that clay crucibles would spall at the melting temperatures of copper. Not likely. The firing temperature falls around that range for many types of clay. The lowest-temperature natural clays, which today are called "earthenware," have firing temperatures ranging from around 1350 deg. F to 2100 deg. F ("cone 3" to a ceramist). The higher-temp earthenware clays are the ones with a lot of iron ore in them. Michigan's UP has a lot of iron ore. Copper melts at temperatures just below

2000 deg. F. This is not a challenge for even the cheapest, lowest-grade clay crucibles available today. They won't last long, but they'll work a few times if you keep them dry.

Iron is the challenge, not copper. If you can tolerate crude results, you can use crude methods to melt and cast copper and copper alloys.

Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

Inger,

Fine. Hunky dory.

This is at least the second time you've written essentially the same thing. You were asked to make specific arguments against what Martin wrote; you have not done so, but continued you ad hominim against her.

Now, are you able to make specific arguments against any of her specific statements? Or are you sticking with your normal ad hominim and just dismissing what she said because it didn't meet your vision of how she should have said it?

For one thing, how much copper do you think was mined prehistorically from the mines in the UP of Michigan and Isle Royale?

For another thing, what evidence do you think persuasive that anyone other than Native Americans mined any copper there before Columbus?

I would like to read your answers to this, with proper akrebi and full references.

Tom McDonald

P.S.: If you reply to this, please quote my post in full.

TSM

Reply to
Tom McDonald

Seppo,

Just as I thought. You have no real arguments with which to counter Martin's points, so you pick away at trivialities and outright strawmen.

In another post, I asked you something that you have neatly avoided:

[begin unaddressed post]

------------------------------------------------------- Seppo,

  1. What in it is bogus?
  2. Where can I read material on the subject that you think is not bogus?

Tom McDonald

----------------------------------------------------------

So, Seppo, do you have specific references to show that Martin was wrong in any of her main points? Or are you satisfied with nitpicking her rhetoric? If the last, why are you posting on sci.archaeology? You do know what archaeology is, don't you. Well, don't you?

Tom McDonald

Reply to
Tom McDonald

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Award-winning archaeologist says collecting, shoreline development threaten artifacts

Archaeologist Susan Martin, left, discusses her research on prehistoric copper mining with Lac La Belle residents Anita and Paul Campbell, members of the Houghton County Historical Society, during the societyís recent Awards Banquet at Shawnís Restaurant in Laurium.

LAURIUM -- Two major threats to the prehistoric copper sites in the Lake Superior Basin are collecting and site destruction by the development of shoreline property, Michigan Technological University Professor and award-winning archaeologist Susan Martin told members of the Houghton County Historical Society recently.

"The copper in this region is absolutely unique in the world," Martin said. "These sites (where prehistoric copper mining took place) are under threat."

During the society's Awards Banquet at Shawnís Restaurant in Laurium, Martin discussed her research on prehistoric copper mining and showed slides of copper artifacts found in the Lake Superior Basin, including some from a site at the foot of Mt. Bohemia near Lac La Belle. At the banquet, David Halkola, historian and Michigan Tech professor emeritus of history, presented Martin with an Award of Merit from the Historical Society of the State of Michigan for her book, Wonderful Power: The Story of Ancient Copper Working in the Lake Superior Basin. [rest SNIPPED]

There's some interesting stuff further on.

Doug

Reply to
Doug Weller

Seppo,

Then make arguments about the points she made, not about the way she made them. Hint: the main questions were: who mined and used the copper; and how much copper was removed from the mines before Columbus?

Or do you insist that your ad hominim is adequate to dismiss her views?

Tom McDonald

Reply to
Tom McDonald

Once again you show your lack of experience. Conferences vary in their purpose, speeches vary in their formality. The sort of presentation you write about would have been entirely inappropriate to the conference in question, which was not an academic conference but the conference of the Michigan Archaeological Society, which is open to all "dedicated to unearthing the past." All you have to do is pay your membership fee.

Once again, you show your disdain of context. And your ability to pontificate about subjects you know nothing about, in this case the audience to which her talk was presented.

The latter. This is typical Inger, bash the person and ignore the arguments. Then she gets upset when people get fed up with her and have a go at her.

I look forward to her answers, but won't hold my breath. Her lack of akrebi and full references is the most probable response.

Reply to
Doug Weller

Seppo,

I do know the meaning of the term. Inger is engaging in it here. I'm asking her to stop her ad hominim and make proper arguments against things she thinks Martin got wrong.

Is this ad hominim really the best you can do? Do you join Inger in dismissing a person's arguments by dismissing the person? Do you really think Martin is so easily dismissable in her field of study? If so, Boom go most of your own references.

[restore what Seppo calls ad hominim from my post]

---------------------------------------------------------- Do you imagine that she didn't make use of the expertise of metallurgical professors at the university? Do you imagine that she, having actually worked at many of the relevant sites, is less able to tell us about the issues than people who haven't her education, experience and contacts?

If you don't at least provide counter-arguments to her points (which you have preached to the rest of us ad nauseum), then you haven't a leg to stand on.

---------------------------------------------------------

I think the purveyor of bogusnessitude here is you. You clearly either can't or don't choose to reply to the substance of Martin's arguments. If you can't say anything relevant, might you at least not forge posts? (You remember what you call forgery, do you not, Seppo? Snipping bits from someone else's post in order to make it seem to say something it didn't say?)

Tom McDonald

Reply to
Tom McDonald

Hi, Seppo,

The whole Susan Martin thing was a complete distraction, that was introduced by Mr. Weller (also known as "dweller"). One must give him credit considering how successful it was...

It has nothing to do with the subject of copper casting in ancient America.

When one begins to bicker about how much copper had been mined over thousands of years in hundreds of mines, the whole thing becomes pretty meaningless... These guys can't even see a mold when it's staring right at them! :)

Regards,

Yuri.

Yuri Kuchinsky in Toronto -=O=-

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It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought -=O=- John K. Galbraith

Reply to
Yuri Kuchinsky

Here we see Mr. Harrison engaging in a well-know exercise of poisoning the wells...

Logical Fallacy: Poisoning the Well

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He seems to be quite a specialist in this sort of thing!

BTW here's what he said about Inger in a recent post,

"Very careless of me not to keep track of what the batty old witch vomits forth."

I guess here we can give him full scores for ageism, religious bigotry, and general unpleasantness.

Yuri.

Martyn Harris>

Reply to
Yuri Kuchinsky

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